Confusion over 'missing' boy

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A case of mistaken identity has heaped mystery on the
disappearance of a 12-year-old Swedish boy in Asia's tsunami,
police said on Wednesday.

The fate of Kristian Walker had triggered a police investigation
and worldwide media speculation that the boy might have been
kidnapped from a Thai hospital.

But police said the reports of Kristian being in hospital had
turned out to be a case of mistaken identity caused by a Thai
doctor who could not tell two European children apart.

"There is no evidence that Kristian Walker has been kidnapped,
but we are still looking for him," Sub-Inspector Stephen Katay told
reporters.

The boy was staying at the Ayara Villas hotel on Khao Lak beach,
just north of the resort island of Phuket, with his mother, brother
and sister when the killer waves roared up the gently sloping beach
and crumpled hotels lining it.

The brother and sister survived the tragedy, but the mother and
Kristian were reported missing.

A Thai doctor later told Kristian's grandfather, who is in
Thailand to try to find his grandson and daughter-in-law, that he
was convinced he had treated Kristian after the disaster and that a
Western man had then taken the boy away.

But police found the man - a German resident of Thailand named
Stephen Kayser - and confirmed he had accompanied a German boy to
the hospital, not Kristian.

"There has been a misunderstanding," Police Captain Chaiyapong
Kanpai told Reuters. "The doctor told me that all European children
looked alike to him."

Kristian's grandfather, Daniel Walker, said he would go on
looking for the boy. "I won't give up my hope," he said.

The former Marine blamed the media for the confusion.

"A serious misunderstanding has come up and that's your fault,"
he told reporters.

The tsunami killed more than 5,200 people in Thailand, nearly
half of them tourists, most of whom died on Khao Lak beach, where
search teams are still pulling bodies from the rubble and
debris.